Crowds assembled on the banks, and if the runaway raft, by the skill of the steersmen and to the flare of torches held out on both sides of the passage, managed to pass through, a ringing cheer was afforded to the skilful captain and his merry men all.
The floaters, or shippers, as they also called themselves, were a sturdy set of men, very muscular, shrewd, and—great drinkers. Each possessed a patch of vineyard, up the side of a mountain, but the home-made wine was sour as vinegar. Great was the eagerness of the floater to be off in May, after having had his teeth set on edge by the sour fruit of the vine at home, so as to be able to descend to the vintage of Rudesheim, Assmannshausen and Steinberg. Later, as the Netherlands are reached, came the strong waters of Hollands, Geneva and Schiedam.
"After all," thought the Floater, as he sat down to his glass in a tavern at Amsterdam, "if I have to be absent from home, wife and children, for three months, still"—in a demoralizing mood, after a hiccup, taking a mouthful of the cordial—"life is made up of compensations."
In 1862–7 the Floater-guilds became bankrupt, and were dissolved.
The Rhine that winter of 1840–1 was frozen over. We remained in Cologne till the ice began to break up and the floes were whirled down the stream. Then we started up the river to Mannheim, that ugliest, except possibly Darmstadt, of German towns.
There are in Deutschland a certain number of towns that have not grown naturally from small beginnings, as situated at the crossing of main roads, or on some navigable river, or as being the seat of some great industry, but which have been artificially created. Such are Darmstadt, Carlsruhe, Stuttgart, Mannheim and Munich. It had become a fashion with the princes in the days of powder and patches for each to found a capital away from the main thoroughfares of trade and the natural lines of communication. They regarded the old thriving cities with scorn, that were inhabited by burghers, and were the seats of manufacture, and of busy markets, as unsuited for their dignity, and disqualified for court gaieties. Had not Louis XIV created Versailles on a sandy waste? Why should not each German princeling also rear his petty Versailles? In the year 1694,
